Before the Judgment of God

Before the Judgment of God

By Metropolitan Vitaly of New York and Eastern America [1986]

 

The entire leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate, in its consistent, intentional, and voluntary stance of standing for 63 years in Sergianism, and then in ecumenism, has become so closely intertwined with these two heresies that it has lost the ability to be reborn and return to the roots of true Orthodoxy. Meanwhile, the apologists of Sergianism are already beginning to actively justify Metropolitan Sergius himself, pointing to the fact that what drove him to sign the infamous Declaration was nothing other than a fervent desire to save the Church in those terrible conditions of rampant militant atheism.

Such defenders of Sergianism, striving to provide some semblance of a foundation for the lies and deception of this heresy, are digging a deep pit for their hierarchs, a pit from which they will never emerge. For universal Orthodox thought, it is already clear that we are all saved in the Church and by the Church, but we do not save the Church. None of the Holy Fathers ever expressed such an absurd idea, bordering on ignorance in the very doctrine of the Church. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the sole Savior of the Church as its Head, and only He alone, no one else. And the recent events in Russia have shown us that the leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate neither managed to nor wished to take advantage of the glasnost and perestroika, providentially given to them as a reprieve, thus finally convincing everyone of their hopeless rigidity and their state of profound servitude to the party. Let us, at last, be frank and speak the truth to their face.

For every honest, right-minded Orthodox Christian, whether layperson, and even more so clergy or bishop, not only of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad but of any Local Church, such prolonged and stubborn persistence in clear error makes the rulers of this patriarchate a guilty body before the eternal Truth—Christ. But what Council will judge them when so many hierarchs of other Orthodox Churches share with Moscow the same ecumenical principles and errors?! As for us, the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, being only a free part of the Russian Church, we have never intended to don the mantle of such judges. However, there is something to ponder, for by our very existence we convict Moscow, and even if we were to remain completely silent, both de facto and de jure, we would still be their silent judges. And our current place is not yet at the judgment, but only within the conscience of the rulers of the Moscow Patriarchate. And it is not we who have placed ourselves in this spiritual domain of conscience, but the Lord Himself.

From everything that has been said, it is evident that all the rulers of the Moscow Patriarchate, due to the impossibility of being judged by a true, impartial, and sincere Episcopal Council and Court, are handed over to the Judgment of God. And this is terrifying, for "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Amen.

 

Russian source: http://internetsobor.org/index.php/istoriya/rptsz/arkhiv-rptsz/mitropolit-vitalij-pered-sudom-bozhiim